Hurt Locker
by Cookie-Stories
Summary: "Agent Barton was sent to kill me. He made a different call." - Natasha's ledger is dripping red with not only the blood of her victims, but her own too. Clint Barton is sent to kill her, and believing that there's more to the Black Widow than what meets the common eye, the Council's eye, he pushes the envelope for his deadline and is implicated. -A story on how they met!-


**A/N: hello!(: i'm back with my interpretation of how Natasha met Clint! in this story, i'm making use of the Council, the Red Room experiences and Uncle Ivan (the guy that saved natasha from the building fire!). summary further down(: **

**I used the title Hurt Locker (yes, it's the name of a Jeremy Renner movie! love it!) because it represents martyrdom. it represents unstopping pain, and affliction and hurt, and all of them go through that throughout the story. **

**disclaimer: disclaimedddd.**

**Summary: Natasha's ledger is dripping red with not only the blood of her victims, but her own too. Clint Barton is sent to kill her, and believing that there's more to the Black Widow than what meets the common eye, the Council's eye, he pushes the envelope for his deadline and gets tangled. The more he pushes, the more he knows, the more Natasha and Clint will get hurt. The more his mission will evolve. ****The more they trust. **

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**Prologue: Defections Of The Perfect**

**(Clint)**

Natalia Romanova is a child. Not necessarily a young one, but she's young enough to ride a few years off his own youth. Nineteen. She is barely an adult.

At that age, girls like her should be going out of their way to doll up for a dinner date. They'll be out shopping on those streets of Moscow. They should be holding anything but a deadly body count and a painfully rich reward for her death. Or at least a single capable hand so that she'll be harmless as a handicapped killer, drowning useless sorrows with quality lager in her other existing hand.

To an extent, Clint knows he roughly had the similar lifestyle as the redhead when he was her age. When he was nine, his world was torn apart in the matter of seconds, watching his mother (Clint had an unspoken connection with her, for some reason.) bleed to death right in front of him and his father's eyes eerily staring lifelessly into his soul.

Over the years, darkness had started to chase at his heels and seduce him over, which fell perfectly into place. He dropped out of school immediately, finding amusement in the darkest of all trades. Barney walked out of his life too, unwilling to be burdened by such a walking travesty of a man. Pure cowardice.

Anger burned in Clint Barton's chest as he remembered family. Family didn't exist anymore, and neither did love or sympathy, or God. He turned to atheism, convinced that until someone came up to him to prove that things were going to improve, he was not going to stop.

The only good (and bad, actually.) he did was for children that were in his initial predicament. Lost, afraid, and alone. Most of his crimes were for the orphans and the homeless, to give them what God wouldn't. A life, love, and happiness. To know that they were in such gratitude, when he watched such broken faces brighten up in enormous glee, was a comfort to him. He couldn't save himself from his little hurt locker, but he knew he would do anything to change that for those kids.

His Robin Hood actions caught the attention of several agencies all around the world. Specifically, SHIELD. An agent started to watch him daily over two months, and suddenly disappeared into thin air again.

Around then, a couple of dirty Moroccan crime watchers started to root several children from their homes to sell for blood money, drawing him out. Then, they bashed him and inflicted several severe wounds, especially crushing his right hand into unsalvageable brittle pieces of bone (Which are now replaced by titanium rods that provides him with just as good a grip.) before thinking he was dead.

Well, that was when Agent Phil Coulson recognised his heart and sent his delirious self straight to SHIELD's medical facility. The events then, that all lead up to here, is the reason why Clint is now part of SHIELD. It's partly a debt, and partly saving grace. A brush of God with his demonic soul and lifestyle. Apparently, six years gone and he's believing again. Thus, he believes that each target of his has a story, a reason to why they led such a lifestyle. It's always the same burning question, even towards himself.

So, is she any different from him? Is Natalia Romanova any different from the one Clint Barton? Nope.

Does she deserve to die? Yes, and no.

Natalia Romanova, indeed, has done many things, assassinated many men, busted agencies and extracted information from hundreds. The reason to why he's here, in fact, is to silence her before she murders yet another man the day after tomorrow. To put an arrow through her throat and get the night over and done with. It takes him long to find a perfect view (She chose her room well.) before he settles down and hawks over her.

However, something about her, the lonesome woman's cup of wine and the book in her hand whispers a little oddity. She doesn't look like the kind to kill, as he watches her from the roof of a near-enough building so as to not be seen so obviously. Although her stoic face betrays his presumptions, and her curls swerve sharply in loose coils that can kill, Clint doesn't believe this girl to be an assassin.

Maybe it's the hair. It seems to be that she had dyed it a darker colour of brunette in this mission, instead of keeping the fiery, intimidating colour on her head. Her hair is usually as red as Russia, the tone of bright oxygenated blood.

Still, the colour just makes her expression much more serene than it should. As she reads, the Black Widow smiles softly. Sadly. She probably allows herself to do that because she's rigged the room with traps for the night, just in case someone decides to play ghost in her room.

Soon enough, Natalia Romanova flips past the last few pages of her chapter and she sets both the glass and the book on the nightstand to turn in for the night. Clint crouches lower behind the semi-wall of the rooftop, watching her as she flits past the window and across the room gracefully in a simple nightdress to turn off the lights.

Her footsteps stay light, soundless as her feet touch the floor and balance over each trigger she's set in her room, all of it that he remembers. Clint smirks. She truly is the Black Widow. Part of that goes to her deadly curves and the irresistible dips and bumps that shape her body. The other goes to the way she moves.

Clint has recognised every mannerism and gesture well enough since he was a child to know truth, and that is true. So, she must be the one that had stolen from the Kremlin a year or two ago. Natalia Romanova tiptoes back to her bed in the darkness and pulls the covers over herself, clutching it tight. Serenity, though, doesn't grace her features as she falls into light sleep, a hand under her pillow.

After a full ten minutes, he draws the string of his bow, tight, with yet another arrow that will determine his target's pulse. Whether it will continue drumming under her warm ivory skin, or if it will halt.

The way he knows her blood will spread across her chest, soaking, not dampening, but drenching the white silk nightdress she has worn to sleep, it disgusts him. Clint has thought about it, though, doing it there and then. Getting the job done.

He can picture the scene out perfectly. His arrow will silently fly right through her heart at night, and a beautiful flower of deep, rose red, colour like the glass of Bloody Mary wine Natasha had drank that night, will bloom in exuberance.

It will create a work of art, a contrast of red to white, on her top. And silently, within minutes of staining the bed lining with the lifeblood of the assassin that bewilders everyone, the girl will die, and he'll be allowed to go home. He waits. From seconds, to minutes, then to hours. Why is he hesitating?

Finally, Clint catches movement. When his bow is lowering, he pulls it back up again, holding its string taut with a loaded arrow. Natalia Romanova stirs at two in the morning, eyes screaming with such alarm that it makes him frown. Still she remains mum. She props herself up unsteadily and holds her head firmly in her hands.

_A weakness_, he thinks. She's defected. Little miss perfect isn't so perfect after all.

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**(Natasha)**

Inhaling in deep breaths, her features reflect a kind of horror. The unease that doesn't leave her, stays with her as she takes in too much oxygen to handle. She swallows dryly, fingers itching for hard alcohol to calm her nerves.

Her heart pounds from the bad dream. A weakness, no less. The rhythm under her chest is racing with agitation. Her feet find the floor and she tips over each trigger, barely missing one of them as she paces in the darkness.

Paranoia starts to drum into her mind, and she feels the eyes of someone landing on her back. Insane, unrealistic possibilities gallop through her mind at lightning speed, never stopping. Not possibilities, but memories. Insane, unrealistic memories that no-one knows about.

She crouches down to the level of the mini fridge, the reflection still scaring her. Red. She hates red. It's sometimes the reason why she throws away the several bouquets of roses that her tongue-wagging targets never fail to present to her. She doesn't like red at all. Black, its better. It's calming to a fault, though it's probably just her.

Her fingers scavenge the fridge for liquor, almost satisfied when they brush over a comforting bottle of vodka. She grabs it and lets the slippery alcoholic burn tear down her throat. Much to her annoyance, one full bottle doesn't do the trick.

Drinking with her targets and still staying sober is part of her bewildering expertise. But right now, all she wants to do is shut everything out. Even her mind. That one full bottle only amplifies everything. The fear, the unease, the paranoia. Everything that the Black Widow is not. It makes her feel stupid. Such a stupid, afraid girl.

She tips the open mouth of another bottle of vodka over her lips, feeling the creases on her forehead wear off and the sore tears gather at the rims of her eyes, both from tire and from affliction.

In crude Russian, she curses herself. For being weak. For being stupid. For crying. If _he_sees it, she knows what happens after. But if day doesn't allow her a release, and night is all she's got, then a release is due sometime soon before he catches up. Of course, he's watching her, and she's definitely afraid.

Will killing her target successfully grant her better mercy? She's not sure, and she can only wait and pray.

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**(Clint)**

When she's chugged down about three to four bottles of solid liquor (Amazingly, she has an exceptional flexibility to how much she holds her liquor! She isn't exactly drunk.), Natalia keeps a looser grace in her steps back to her bed and crawls underneath the messily crumpled duvet. Then, she lays there.

She doesn't sleep. The assassin just stares, and stares, and stares. She stares till her eyes are dry, and she blinks with a flinch that no-one could possibly catch. Though, that can't escape his hawk eyes. She stares till she looks like she isn't. Instead, her mind seems to be drifting.

As her breathing steadies a little more, she sits up on the bed again and swallows two pills before sitting with her legs tucked to her chest, thinking. By now, it's already half past four. Natalia Romanova doesn't try to sleep anymore, face a little afraid. Her hands are in fists too.

She _is_afraid, probably of something bigger than her. Or if she gets caught. Or maybe a nightmare. All Clint knows is that she isn't unfeeling. His observations tell him otherwise, and it makes him wonder so much.

'Coulson, the mission's done for tonight. I'm pushing the deadline, the Council be damned.' He talks into his comm. with his handler, eyes never leaving the broken child. No, not a child. A cold case.

Through the static, Coulson exclaims in both worry about the wrath of the higher-ups and frustration towards his agent. It has to be the sixth time he's pushed deadlines in the past three years. But he did get the job done nonetheless. So he inhales and bites his tongue. 'Your target is a nineteen year old with a body count exceeding yours. SHIELD wants her down...'

There's a long pause in between before his voice softens. 'Even if she's a cold case, Clint. If you have nothing to bring up to the Council, they'll terminate you and wipe you off the earth for your record. You won't be seeing light until your next life.'

'And I just want answers, Coulson.' Clint says, keeping his weapon and slinging his quiver off his back. The arrows rattle in the sheath. 'But I'll kill her after that. I just need a better deadline.'

His handler sighs into the device and gives in to Clint. Agent Phil Coulson produces a sound in his throat as acknowledgement and rewards himself a nap after an unproductive night. Up on the roof, Clint doesn't stop eyeing her, not in an ogling way. It's more perplexing, which he comes to conclude soon enough.

Somewhere in between learning her defect and her leaving the room, Clint realises that her weakness disappears. It cowers in a shaded spot when the sunlight spills onto the clouds and over the concrete buildings. Her face returns to a stoic, bloodshot but stone-hearted expression with hours of sleeplessness packing bruised shadows under her eyes.

Still, he trusts that it will return, because he watched the highly threatening Black Widow, crumble in the shadows of her night.

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**TBC or not TBC? decide for me! reviews much appreciated, since it's only the first time i've stepped onto this topic!(: updates (if wanted) will be as soon as possible because i have school!(: goodnight then, lovelies. **


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